Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
Instead we're seeing a lot of recycled assets. Part of that, we must understand, is that we're still in development and these can be placeholders. You simply need something for now while a proper asset is being created. If that's the scenario, I'm perfectly happy with it. It's just how development works.
However, what I suspect is that they're under some time pressure to deliver a finished product. They've had some major creative shuffles on the team and COVID forcing everyone to work from home has slowed down every industry, even the ones that can easily adapt like gaming. I'm noticing that the same predators are being used in multiple zones. There aren't as many types of fish in the game. The biomes aren't as unique. Examples: The feather fish are in nearly every zone. Squidsharks are now in 3. They just added spike traps to Deep Lilly where they don't fit and didn't even change the colors to match. I saw two juvenile ventgardens floating through upper Lillypads in the current stable EA build. Glow whales are now in the Lillypad zone as well as the Arctic.
Sometimes, these make sense. I'd absolutely love to see the glow whales be migratory as pods instead of simply doing large circles in their current iteration. The art is simply too good to waste, and having a pod of them traveling together could be a magical experience. In RL, people pay good money to take boats to go watch the RL analogues of these along migratory patterns. It's majestic, and something the artists absolutely should try and recreate in BZ.
So, we'll see. Maybe it's placeholders. Maybe it's unfinished. All we can do is express our desire to see this game live up to its potential.
one year ago, ish, we had Stalkers from the first Subnautica in game filling in the role of one of the predators, so it's not like they haven't been adding in creatures to be placeholder and then removing them when they have the real one
as for ventgardens, i've noticed they seem to float aimlessly without limitiations, and eventually they wind up in areas they don't normally spawn in. i found one floating way out away from the lily pads once the game had been going for a while
forgot until i looked at old screenshots, that Bonesharks used to be in game too, i think they were replaced with the new Cryptosuchus
It's old so I'm not sure to remember but there has been quite a long time before we have all biomes unlocked in subnautica.
When BZ came out I thought it would be in a much more advanced stage, but turns out it was not much more than what we had with the first subnautica, with better graphics because that part was already partially done in subnautica.
So this might indeed change in the future, the game is already much more than what it was when subnautica came out.
Answer: Because those were Juveniles and the Cove Tree is their nesting/hatching grounds.
Why were there Adult Ghosts in the Crater?
Answer: As they age and feed they grew exponentially large, very fast. They out grow their environment and leave the Lost River to continue to feed and grow.
Why were there "Ancient" Ghost Leviathans out in the void?
Answer: Fully grown adult Ghost Leviathans continue to grow as they continue to feed and age, and thus continue to outgrow their habitat. The void becomes the only "ecosystem" able to support them, and their mass and vast nutritional needs.
Why weren't there Reapers in the Lava Zone?
Answer: Because Sea Dragons exist, and we see what happens to Reapers (Skeletons)
Pretty much, most, not all, most of the biomes in Subnautica had some kind of fauna or flora unique to it, and there was a plausable believable reason as to why.
Below Zero for example, it makes sense there's only 1 random lost Snowstalker in any area other than the Glacial Basin, there's not enough land for them to raise their young on.
It makes sense we don't run into the Ice Worm in the water.
I don't expect to come across a Brinewing while on land.
But why are Lillypaddlers in the Tree Spires?
Why are Squidsharks in the Lillypad Islands?
Why are the Shadow Leviathans in the Crystal/Fabricator Caverns? (other than filling the role/trope of "big scary ultimate baddie guarding final zone)
Why is there a sepatate colony of sea monkey nests in the Lillypad areas?
Pengwings use floating iceburgs to help raise their young, why don't they also use the Lillypads?
Why isn't there a surface skimmer? The Hoverfish from Subnautica would be PERFECT as a surface dwelling passive fauna in the Lillypad islands and the unique Lillypads themselves..
The debris of the wreckage and the Lillypads are a missed chance for some kind of cave/crevice dwelling eel. Literally think Mario 64 Eel behavior. They hide in wait, and lunge out biting, like Crabsnakes, in logic, but use rocks/holes/cracks to hide and hunt from.
Make them longer, thus giving more reach from their nest, but make them less likely to leave their nest to actively pursue or hunt prey.
As I said before, they gave the only tentacle grapple attack in the game to a stationary flora! Why not the Squidshark! Not only would that make more sense, but it'd help differentiate it from the Chelicerate as currently they both attack in virtually the same identical way.
Again, I understand "placeholders" But we're at the mid way point. This isn't the beginning or the start, we're at the point where what we're seeing in game should and WILL be indicative of the final product, but time left for changes to be made.
I wonder what kind of lore and stuff they will add for things like Fauna/Flora PDA entries.
OK, HOW THE HECK DID YOU DO THAT? I WAS ABOUT TO SUGGEST THE DARN EEL FROM SM64, and YOU BEAT ME TO IT?!? /s
But seriously, we need a Bobbit Worm wannabe somewhere other than the land, and not the incredibly obvious quartet of ominously waving tentacles. And yes, the squidsharks don't fit the aesthetic of the lilypad islands at all. And it makes no geographical sense either. The deep twisty bridges is not on the same level, and is far more befitting the "squid" thematic. True, the lilypad islands doesn't have many predators, but what about the fact that these two unrelated, unconnected biomes have the only instances of the squidshark? the entirety of the deep purple vents is uninhabited by ANY hostile creatures (not even crashfish), and it's a little loud, but I would think the Cryptos above would be MUCH louder. The thermal spires are DARK and MURKY, perfect for a squid creature. And the jellyfish are a missed opportunity too, they could be clingy with bright objects (vehicles) and resemble CrabSquids, or they could be aggressive when the player isn't in a vehicle (or the lights aren't on) due to the fact that they are an eyeball with tentacle stingers. Most hostile enemies will charge if the lights on a seatruck are on, even if the player isn't at the wheel, so this could be a good psych-out to the player consciously keeping his lights off for stealth reasons.
The chelicerate is easily the biggest threat above the crystal cave layer, but there's that section in between the surface of the ocean floor, and the crystal cave layer that's seemingly dormant. only a few sharksquids, rock punchers, a spikey trap, and crash fish pose any threat here. The sharksquid you won't meet on your way to the bottommost layers, and the rock punchers are only in the thermal spires and crystal caves (but not the deep purple vents). Crashfish are nothing new, just an annoying reminder to take it slowly and not go in without a repulsion cannon. And I have heard of spikey traps in the lilypad islands, but I can't find one on the way to the crystal caves. You are more likely to die from asphyxiation than anything else in the deep lilypad caves, and the deep purple vents. And the deep Tree Spire crevasse. Where are the sea spiders? The robotic drones? The Anglerfish? The Octopuses? The KRAKEN? That creature on the concept art of the Deep Twisty Bridges looks too good to not include. The glowy, centipede/ribbon fish leviathan? That would be cool to see! But no. We get a freaky hentai wannabe plant/animal thing, and a crossbreed between two mortal enemies on earth, that essentially replaces the electric eel, Bone shark, and River prowler at once. If they expanded it a bit more, that DTB biome could house a Shadow Levi. Or a kind of octopus? An aquatic "Ice worm"? An actual squid (just when you thought it couldn't get darker... INK TIME!)? Or an overgrown anglerfish, like the "Leviathan" from the Calamity mod in Terraria?
Speaking of that spikey trap, what exactly is it supposed to eat? It seems to ignore the sharksquids, and the smaller fish too. So does it wait for scraps from above? If it's a sessile creature, it might be plausible to wait on scraps to tumble down, but I dunno... those squidsharks don't seem to be messy eaters....
Due to how scarce resources are in some areas I'm surprised they didn't bring the blood leech back. But yeah, I wanna see a crab. Like, the Rock Punchers are neat, but they are too slow to be a real threat and now with their new foraging behavior they are more useful than a threat. But give me an armored snow crab on land, or how about this?
Subnautica had Reedbacks? Well how about Reefback crabs in Below Zero? And instead of swimming around, they move along the ocean floor every now and then. They are so large the top of their shell supports an ecosystem of plants, coral, and fauna. And they are mostly dormant, appearing as if just rocky terrain. But have triggres, or timers, to "Wake up" and stand up and move around then sit back down.
Maybe so large they don't have any natural predators so ignore the player, or make em medium sized and have them swat at the player if they are in front of or directly on top of their front? It would be like the Ventgarden, but it'd do more then just exist and not move or do anything but still fits the bill of "creature so huges it is its own moving biome"
Any of us who've had high school biology understand the idea of a basic food web. Part of what I would have really liked to see more of in SN and especially BZ was an emphasis on building a believable undersea ecology. It's one thing to draw up some concept art then slap in a THC-fueled idea (Lilypaddler anyone?). It's another thing entirely to think through why a biome would look and act the way it does. What creatures would it have? Why would they be adapted the way they are? What eats what? Why do the various creatures behave the way they do? I'll cop to having a biology degree, so I'm biased, but I think we all generally understand what I'm getting at.
For example, with Twisty bridges, we get this overgrown alien coral jungle. A fantastic idea, but corals are filter feeders, so you need a nutrient source. The nearby thermal vents make sense if you have a current. Ok, so that's the base of the food pyramid, then add the small symbiotic fish. They give us hoopfish and a handful of bladder fish and peepers for practical reasons (it's an early zone and players still fish for food). Then what eats those? Brute sharks. Cool. We've got a fleshed out zone. It's basically an extension of the starting shallows and it works.
But then we go outside this. Dive deep and you're in Deep Twisty where you have the triops as a bottomfeeder and the spike trap (cool), but also this shark that's so constricted it can barely path through. While its color scheme is perfect, it's the wrong predator. In fact, all the deep zones suffer from this space issue, where they simply made the zones too small to accommodate leviathan class creatures.
Thermal spires is nearly barren aside from a few rockpunchers. I would have imagined these to be deep sea crustaceans worthy of the mines and the crystal caverns. Some place deep, not the shallowest water in the game outside of the starting zone. Game play-wise, these would offer you some guards for all the ores down there and a threat to your prawn.
Purple vents is just cryptosucchus territory. You have the amazing underwater Yellowstone geyser zone literally pouring nutrients into the ocean. It should be teeming with filter feeders, benthic crustaceans (crabs, horseshoe crabs, think Cambrian explosion or even pre-Cambrian invertebrates!) Instead they've got a crocodile which is an amphibious shallow water creature that dogpaddles instead of using it's tail and is named "crypto" (meaning "hidden") but roars constantly. This creature is entirely wrong for this zone. It should be in a shallow version of the Lilypad zone and should possibly nest on the lilypads to justify the amphibious creature design.
The Lilypad zone is another peeve of mine. It's a beautiful zone, and even more so the more of it that gets finished. But it's a temperate lake in an arctic sea. We can suspend disbelief as long as there's an energy source. Put the Deep Purple Vents or the Thermal Spires below it and it makes sense. You're sitting over a geologic hotspot, so the water's warmer. Then we have floating rocks with no reason to float and these huge lilypads with nothing living around or among them. They should be teeming with symbiotes of some kind (not the fish named "symbiotes" because they're specific to the Titan hole fish - a great idea on its own that should remain with the glacial ice shallows). This is where you need your amphibians. There are lots of herbivores in this zone (no problem), but at some point you need an apex predator to feed on them. The squidsharks or chelicerates can work, but this is really where you need that cryptosucchus. Crocodiles are ambush predators. They could hide under the lilypads or on the ground, then attack. Dragonbornzyra's idea of the hoverfish would fit perfectly in shallow lilypads as well.
At this point, I hesitate to even go into Tree Spires, Crystal Caverns, and the Fabricator zone because they're simply too unfinished. It's all recycled except the shadow leviathan and the rock grub. The Ventgardens are fantastic, but the rest of the ecosystem is missing. It's just feather fish everywhere and some roaring shark to add danger. For game play, they meet standard: fish and a threat. But for having a developed biome, it's not there.
Then we get to the land zones. The stalkers and ice worms have some of the best AI of any threat in the game. They're well done, but what do they eat if they're not eating Alterra employees? There's nothing else in the zones to justify them. And they're huge. Huge creatures have huge energy requirements. What are they eating on a barren glacier?
I've probably written enough. I'll leave our Architect friend's designed body for another thread.
And they recently gave the Squidshark some kind of electric/emp attack that drains Seatruck powercells? So they gave it an Ampeel/Crabsquid ability, on a shark, with tentacles, that doesn't use tentacles, but uses electricity, for no reason, and has identical attack animations as the Chelicerate. Why? Why?
Unless I'm mistaken, Prawn suit is immune to Rockpuncher damage. I've sat in one and stared at a Rockpuncher throwing a tantrum last night and 100% Prawn hull the whole time. I don't know if its a glitch but out of all the creatures in the game, you'd think the ROCKPUNCHER could hurt the prawn, but then again the Ice Worm can't even do more than 5% damage at a time. (Unless those values were changed) But also agree it has no purpose and is out of place in the Thermal Spires.
The Cryptocurrency creatures (as roomate calls em) are the most rediculous creature in Subnautica/Below Zero. As you pointed out, it doggy paddles. IT DOGGY PADDLES. It's laughable. It's stupid. It's the most cartoonish dumb out of place thing I've seen in either game. It's biting my face off and all I can do is laugh like it tickles and pet it. It's more adorable than Peepers, Cuddlefish, or Seamonkeys or Trivalves. It should be Subnautica's new mascot. Worst creature design be FAR. *Add further insult to injury, they gave it a loud Godzilla like rawer, then you turn around and see a lizard with flippers doggy paddling excitedly at you*
Rock Grubs are actually kinda recycled, they are from Subnautica, and they are supposed to be food for the Rockpunchers but instead of allowing us to feed them (they let us feed almost everything else why not Rockpunchers?) they gave them a foraging behavior (also recycled from Subnautica's Sea Treaders)
Too much recycling with no practicality. Why did they give Squidsharks electricity attacks? Why are they in the Lillypad Islands? Now that Lillypaddlers are in the Lilypads, what are they going to replace the Lillypaddlers in the Tree Spires with? Brute sharks swimming in the middle of the open ocean neither at surface nor bottom is not a threat. Tree Spires is about the most gorgeous biome in the game, and it's practically the most useless and barren.
I despise the land section (Glacial Basin/Arctic Spires) with a violent passion. But, to be fair, the Snowstalkers are supposed to be eating the Pengwings. And the Ice Worm eats Snowstalkers. But then again, there aren't any Pengwings in the Spires, so dunno what the Snowstalkers over there eat. And if the adult Snowstalkers swim out to open sea to hunt, and use the caves to raise their young, then why don't we see them out in the open ocean hunting for their young like Pengwings? Also, there's the issue of the HUGE animal skeletons littering Snowstalker caves and near by them. What creature are they from? They make no sense.
Deep Lillypad Caves (Or as Roomate calls em the butt hole caves) (Why does everything look so much like an orrafice?) Go down there and scan a body part and that's it. Collect a flower spore, get a Deep Lilly Mushroom. That's it. Pick up a few resources. Watch out for ONE recently added Squidshark. Meh?
AL-AN is a ripoff of Visser from the Animorph novels that is a hyper advanced alien being that subverts itself to being in Robin's mind because she's a Mary Sue and UWE's writer for Below Zero is writing fanfics and not an interesting story.
https://animorphs.fandom.com/wiki/Esplin_9466?file=Alloran_VISSER.jpg
I never thought of it that way, very funny in the context the OP.
Creature behavior in BZ is by far the most disappointing to me. This one aspect of the game should be the avenue to provide the "tension" that we experienced in SN1.
The devs simply Copied, Cut, and Pasted SN1 creature behaviors into BZ. As the biology students have pointed out, these creatures need to have rhyme and reason to their physical build, environment placement and by all means, their varied behaviors and how they interact with one another.
If a player kills all the crypto's, there should be a cause/effect to the food chain. Egg laying/hatching behaviors; day/night cycle behaviors; migration, ect.
I understand that the young player demographic is being catered to for the money, that is not a problem. The devs should have applied a dynamic to the game mechanic that as a player progresses so does the the creature behaviors. At some point the young players loose interest or find another game, this should be easy to determine. at this point the game should really come alive.
Tension is not the same as fear. BZ lacks both!! The easiest way to create an unknown situation in this game is to make the creatures more life like in their behavior patterns. My personal favorite is to thaw out that big monster. You never have to see him, just his cause/effects.
To balance this out, you would always know it's coming. First the Blizzard, then the blood curdling screaming howl in the Blizzard winds signaling its approach.
too funny if you forget and leave a door open. But yes this game is lacking on the diversity.